h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Don't get me wrong, I love Adam's work, but I think Pratchett is loads better. In my opinion h2g2 was best as a radio series. The books tended to drag painfully. I've left Tewatime of the Soul under the bed for months and months out of frustration; I was only ten pages from the end too.
Pratchett's works are fun, faster paced, have fantastic plots and really good characters. I especially like the way Death tries to blend in with humans and his speech is in capitals with no quotation marks. Pratchetts books are easier to get into. It sometimes reminds me of the Simpsons (Nobby and Colon are a bit like Cheif Wiggum and his cops and Ankh-morpork has that city-ness of Springfield).
I do enjoy DNAs work and I'm glad there isn't a lot of it (the fifth was too much). I agree with the guy a few postings back, DNA does one-liners while Pratchett stretches them out then snaps 'em at you.

I have to agree with you about DEATH. He is a very classy character and it is very amusing how he tries to get to grips with human ways. Vimes has to be another favourite. He just seems like a good guy who has turned cynical due to an overdose of Ankh Morpork. Rincewind is yet another masterpiece of writing. Truly original unless I'm sourly mistaken.
Have you read Salmon of Doubt?

"I agree with the guy a few postings back, DNA does one-liners while Pratchett stretches them out then snaps 'em at you."

Not a guy - but not that obvious either. Glad it isn't just me who likes TPs extended jokes.

a girl called Ben

true.true. again I have to refer to Salmon Of Doubt. Can anyone that has read it please tell me? There is a very good story about his childhood years during which he towered over his teachers while wearing shorts(the uniform). Again, what a prodigy of a writer...

Ah, now I know what the 'agc' bit stands for! It's just so hard to determine genders aroound here! Is Salmon of Doubt in hardback?

NP

Yus, hardback at the moment...

I enjoy reading books by both but...

With Terry Pratchetts books I find some of his writing predictable, at times I find myself seeing the plot lines coming before I get there, which rather spoils things.

With DNA's writing I could never predict what was coming up and he obviously spent a long time finding just the right words (which might well explain his well known love of deadlines )

To dismiss Pratchett as a *parodist* is to miss the point entirely.
Most of his recent works, certainly from Lords and Ladies onwards are satires so biting that the targets are wholly savaged and spat out by the end of the novel. To satarise hairdressers and their ultimate usefulness to society, for example, is pretty much like shooting fish in a barrel. To take on the workings of the popular press and the real politik of city governance in the way Pratchett did in Interesting Times is close to miraculous.
(I'd also like to see proof of the suggestion that's been made here that his plots are merely parodies of others ideas and therefore he can't plot...)
I also find the idea that plot is a bonus in a novel hilarious and offensive at the same time, but I guess it's that sort of attitude that allows Lucas to make a fortune so I'm probably in a minority. Which is *not* to say that I think DNA couldn't plot. It wasn't his strong point, but he could do it. I haven't read one of his books since So Long..., which I thought was one HH too far. However, the Guardian review of SoD referred to Mostly Harmless as the bleakest book in modern SF, so I might be tempted to give that a go.(Perverse, me? Never )
If I had to pick a writer that DNA most resembles, it would be American SF humourist Robert Sheckley, whose Dimension of Miracles could almost have served as a blueprint for HH.
I can't think of *anyone* who resembles Pratchett, except Pratchett. He remains the only author I know who can actually make me laugh out loud.

Try Piers Anthony

Well, Xanth was a nice idea until the puns started to rule the plots rather than vice versa, yes.
Actually, the Xanth novels follow an almost diametrically opposite course to Pratchett's books, which started life as jokes with plots bolted on but have increasingly become plots with added jokes.

Some observations: anyone who knows Adams and Pratchett both, should also read this: A735743 . Pratchett called Rankin "one of the rare guys who can always make me laugh." He's not LIKE Pratchett, or Adams, buy if you like them, you'll probably like him.

The original question was "did they know each other given that their styles are identical". There's general consensus here that their styles were anything but, and I agree 100%.

For instance, when you buy the new Pratchett, you have an idea what to expect: something qualitatively similar to the one you bought six months previously; a tightish plot, sometimes two or three; pointed observations on life, as reflected in his characters and settings; jokes about Death; humourous footnotes; and surprising amounts of actual character development.

When you buy a new Douglas Adams - something we'll not now have the chance to do again - you get none of that predictability. Consider: the first book is going well, then ends suddenly and unpredictably for reasons related to publishing deadlines and not plot. The second book picks up where the first left off but goes in a completely unexpected direction for people familiar with the radio or tv series. The third book is so unlike the first two I had trouble even understanding what was going on when I first read it, which is probably related to the fact that it's a recycled Dr. Who plot into which the HH characters have been uncomfortably shoehorned. The fourth book is more reflective and less frenetic than the first three and hardly seems like a HH book at all. And the fifth... well, I did exactly the same thing as someone else here, and read it once. I was so startled by it I put it down and never picked it up again - and bear in mind I read the first two so many times I can SEE the pages even as I'm sitting here. Then there were the Dirk Gently books - the first a masterpiece of intricate multilayered plotting, and not immediately obvious as a recycling of elements from the scripts of a couple of Dr. Who stories. The second something more doom laden, I felt, and different again. Then there was The Meaning of Liff, a book which I recommend to anyone because if you don't laugh out loud at something in it you're probably dead, and Last Chance to See, which is wholly different again. The point being that in many ways if you took the authors name off the cover, you'd have a hard time identifying all these books as being by the same person - and that applies to the HH series alone, for that matter. Take Pratchett's name off the cover and you could still tell that they were all written by the same guy - even some of the non-Discworld stuff is, I think, identifiable as him.

Now I know Pratchett has done a lot of writing that was not Discworld. But the interesting thing is, there's something of a common tone to all of his writing, something I didn't see in Douglas Adams's work. Every new work from Pratchett seems to me to be a new product from an artist maturing and refining his art to ever greater heights of complexity and perception. Every new thing from Douglas Adams sounded like something from a *different person*, going in a different direction, with a different take on life. Neil Gaiman pointed out in the second edition of "Don't Panic" (soon to be rereleased in a new edition) that the sequence in "Mostly Harmless" featuring the Perfectly Ordinary Beasts showed the clear influence of Douglas's globetrotting while writing "Last Chance to See", and is something he would never have written in, say, 1980. Similarly, Dirk Gently showcased his interest in the possibilities of computer software, again, something he didn't really seem interested in in the HH books, but which must have become more of an obsession after he got involved with Infocom and Apple products.

It's not really fair to compare them, I think, because they really are very different. For one thing, Terry very clearly loves being a writer, and loves writing. Douglas obviously hated writing, and would rather have been almost anything else, it seems, than a writer.

My own feeling is that comparing Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett is like comparing Monty Python and Fawlty Towers: the first is mercurial, patchy, and despite occasional lapses and lack of punchlines is mostly very good and occasionally transcendentally brilliant, despite and sometimes because of the multiplicity of directions it goes in; the second is a disciplined, faultless construction of humour, calculated and premeditated with skill and precision and with a very definite direction. There's no need to choose between them.

H.

Rankin! thank you, I've been trying to remember that name while people were spouting the vertues of Pratchett (which one had the time sprout in Elvis' head?). I grew out of Pratchett, along with most of my friends, sometime during highschool. His books were great when I read them but there is not much to distinguish one from the other from memory.

Someone on the last page of posts talked about character development and mentioned some authors. Partick Tilley or Amtrak Wars is character development, you can spent a few books getting to know a character.

When I first read HGttG I couldn't put it down, I took a breather every few chapters to see what's new with the world, eat, drink etc (I read the first 4 books back to back). I hazard to say they made perfect sense but I never was an organised thinker

I hesistate to comment on the idea of Pratchett being grown out 'while in High School' of in favour of Patrick Tilley's clankingly dreadful Amtrak books.
Oh, I just did.

I never said the Amtrak books were the greatest work but after surviving the first few chapters of book one there is a lot of character development.

"in favour of Patrick Tilley's clankingly dreadful Amtrak books." You're making up things between the lines. I read both around the same time and didn't go from one to the other. Have you actually read any Amtrak books?

Pratchett is funny but if I want to see what's comming ahead of the plot I'll watch American TV (most of it with some exceptions)

I dunno.
I must be very stupid as I'm the only person on the planet that *can't* predict a Pratchett plot apparently.

Yeah, I've read Tilley. Like I said, clankingly dreadful.

"I grew out of Pratchett, along with most of my friends, sometime during highschool." - which makes me mentally about 25 years younger than my actual age - one of us is clearly missing something here.

Take another look at the Pratchett books in a decade or so, you may be surprised at what you find there.

And I don't particularly try to follow the plots. I am fascinated by him as a semiotician.

B

Blue Shark
"I can't think of *anyone* who resembles Pratchett, except Pratchett. He remains the only author I know who can actually make me laugh out loud."

Have you read any of Jack Vance's 'Dying Earth' novels? He was writing from the 50's until the present date, and his wizards are practically identical to Pratchet's. Pratchet's plots are cuddlier versions of Vance's. The names of the spells are the most obvious rip-off - sorry - homage.

You're so much more tactful than me Ben...

Apparition; how much did you know about the UK during highschool? I find the more I read TP the more I realise I'm missing jokes that relate to England exclusively. "the last continent" was quite an eye-opener - practically every line is a reference, and its much easier to get when its about your own country. (I know you're a kiwi, but we share enough culture for the reaction to be similar)

From

"And Duncun. 'Cos Duncun's me mate"

right down to references to Sam Neil in Jurassic Park.